In 2006, Pluto stopped being a planet. “Pluto is dead,” said Mike Brown, a researcher from the California Institute of Technology, whose discovery a year earlier of a bigger world orbiting beyond Pluto led some astronomers to rethink what defines a planet—and ultimately decide that Pluto doesn’t count. “There are finally, officially, eight planets in the solar system.”
Fast forward a decade, and Brown is saying the opposite.

Brown, along with Caltech’s Konstantin Batygin, announced Wednesday that they have evidence that suggests a massive planet is orbiting in the edge of the solar system, far beyond Pluto, that would qualify as its ninth planet. The authors describe the planet, which they’re calling “Planet Nine,” in a paper published in The *Astronomical Journal.
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Planet Nine is big—really big. It is 10 times the mass of Earth, and 5,000 times the mass of Pluto. It dominates a region larger than any of the other known planets, which Brown says makes it “the most planet-y of the planets in the whole solar system,” according to a press release from Caltech. That’s the test Pluto failed to pass a decade ago—having enough mass to clear its orbit of other bodies with similar size.

Brown and Batygin have not directly observed Planet Nine, but have inferred its existence through mathematical models and computer simulations based on the movements of small, distant objects. From here, the planet is not even a speck of light in the vast darkness of space, and could only be seen—if it’s found—by powerful telescopes.

Brown and Batygin say Planet Nine helps explain a peculiar feature of the Kuiper Belt, a field of icy and rocky objects beyond Neptune: a mysterious clustering of six small objects that, by the laws of the Kuiper Belt, shouldn’t cluster. In 2014, Scott Sheppard of the Carnegie Institution of Science in Washington and Chad Trujillo of the Gemini Observatory in Hawaii suggested the configuration resulted from the presence of a planet large enough to warp the orbits of the nearby objects, lassoing them together. Brown and Batygin sought to disprove that theory. But they realized that, actually, something must be there—“a massive perturber”—because they found that, among other things, the orbits of the objects, even though they traveled at different rates, all tilted in the same way. The probability of that happening on its own, without some external force, is about 0.007 percent.

At the time, I thought the whole move to demote Pluto was quite Goofy.

Since only Venus(Mother Earth does not count) has a female name any new planet must be given a female name for political correctness. It should be an Asian or African goddess gracious enough to accept the apologies of all white male astronomers.

Since only Venus(Mother Earth does not count) has a female name any new planet must be given a female name for political correctness. It should be an Asian or African goddess gracious enough to accept the apologies of all white male astronomers.

That’s exactly how this planet was “seen.” The relationship between light and gravity has only recently been uncovered. There are a lot of forces (and waves) in play here.

You mean by Einstein? Yet I thought Galilieo and Newton (or maybe it was Kepler) were aware of the effect of other planets on any other given planet’s orbit, because they were all involved in overthrowing the Aristotlean model of the universe, to which the observed orbits of the planets did not fit.

You mean by Einstein? Yet I thought Galilieo and Newton (or maybe it was Kepler) were aware of the effect of other planets on any other given planet’s orbit, because they were all involved in overthrowing the Aristotlean model of the universe, to which the observed orbits of the planets did not fit.

This new proposed planet would be so faro out that by comparison Pluto would be next door. Also it may be very dim. It may also restart the whole argument about whether the Sun has a very dim companion star such as a brown dwarf, Sedna raised that question again as it’s orbit is rather bizarre and puzzling.

This new proposed planet would be so faro out that by comparison Pluto would be next door. Also it may be very dim. It may also restart the whole argument about whether the Sun has a very dim companion star such as a brown dwarf, Sedna raised that question again as it’s orbit is rather bizarre and puzzling.

One of the commentators on Fox mentioned a “year” that is 12,000 Earth years long, but I think he was talking off the top of his head.

You mean by Einstein? Yet I thought Galilieo and Newton (or maybe it was Kepler) were aware of the effect of other planets on any other given planet’s orbit, because they were all involved in overthrowing the Aristotlean model of the universe, to which the observed orbits of the planets did not fit.

That is also true AFAIK. Maybe you saw the same “Physics of Light” that I did? There was Galilean relativity, though that was at speeds far shorter than light. Newton experimented with gravity as everyone knows and solved many of the problems associated with it, such as the moon not falling to the earth. Kepler wrote on planet orbit, as you’ve mentioned. All these works btw were written in Latin, and Newton’s is said to have been the most influential piece of work in this millennium. (I kind of enjoy reading that Latin.)

Twenty years ago I asked a professor if the sun were to blow up for some reason, would it take 8 minutes to find out or would we feel the effects immediately. The answer was that nothing exceeds the speed of light so we would see the sun explode and feel the effects at the same time. My brother posed the question of whether gravity also travels in waves, and I see it consistent with the speed of electromagnetic waves which are light waves as we know them. Yet there are still physicists out there not convinced, that we would feel the effects of the sun’s gravitational pull (or lack of it) before we see it.

Among other things, Einstein proved the absoluteness of the speed of light. Whether we travel at half the speed one way or the other makes no difference. At lower speeds of course velocity is relative, as Galileo showed.

This new proposed planet would be so faro out that by comparison Pluto would be next door. Also it may be very dim. It may also restart the whole argument about whether the Sun has a very dim companion star such as a brown dwarf, Sedna raised that question again as it’s orbit is rather bizarre and puzzling.

Who believes that the sun has a dim companion? This is the first time I’ve heard this so I find it a bit puzzling.